Connecting to two SSIDs simultaneously

Shahir Ahang 1 Reputation point
2021-03-09T01:47:37.14+00:00

Hello Community - I am experiencing something that I am unsure is an issue or Windows 10 networking working as intended. What I need to do is to connect to the Internet (home Wi-Fi network) using the onboard wireless NIC (Wi-Fi) and at the same time, connect to a hardware device which has its own SSID using an external USB wireless NIC (Wi-Fi 2). Please also note that the device does appear to run a DHCP server and assigns an IP address and subnet mask to the host but not a default gateway when connected.

I see both wireless NICs in Device Manager as well as Wi-Fi adapters. What happens is when I connect to home Wi-Fi using Wi-Fi (onboard Wi-Fi adapter), it connects and I'm connected to the Internet. When I click on Show available networks under Wi-Fi 2 (external USB Wi-Fi adapter) and select the advertised SSID from the hardware device, it connects to the device using Wi-Fi (not Wi-Fi 2) and disconnects from my home Wi-Fi SSID and thus no Internet access.

So my question is is it possible to connect to two SSIDs using two different wireless NICs simultaneously? I know I can do this using a single Wireless NIC and an ethernet connection or two (or more) different ethernet connections but unsure if this will work with two wireless networks given what I have experienced.

Shahir

Windows 10 Network
Windows 10 Network
Windows 10: A Microsoft operating system that runs on personal computers and tablets.Network: A group of devices that communicate either wirelessly or via a physical connection.
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  1. Sunny Qi 10,896 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2021-03-09T09:42:23.42+00:00

    Hi,

    Thanks for posting in Q&A platform.

    You can have 2 different network interfaces, but it will only use 1 for the internet. The problem is how system will decide which network packet to send through which network interface.

    Best Regards,
    Sunny

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  2. Shahir Ahang 1 Reputation point
    2021-03-09T15:45:33.56+00:00

    SunntQi - Thanks for responding. As I mentioned in my question, I am not even able to connect simultaneously to the two WLAN networks let alone the system deciding to send packets through a particular interface (which can be done via ROUTE ADD command).

    The question really is does W10 allow two different WLAN NICs to connect to two different WLANs at the same time? What I have experienced does seem to be the case but I want to confirm this.

    The fact that I can do this with two (or more) wired ethernet connections would make me think it is possible but I have not been able to do it or have seen others do it.

    Shahir

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  3. Sunny Qi 10,896 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2021-03-10T09:11:58.18+00:00

    Hi Shahir,

    Thanks for posting in Q&A platform.

    Regarding of your issue, theoretically it is possible to allow two different WLAN NICs to connect to two different WLANs. But we don't have such Wi-Fi devices for testing in our environment.

    Best Regards,
    Sunny

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